Tesla is Developing Electric Self-Driving Trucks

Electric carmaker Tesla is planning to create electric trucks able to drive themselves and to coordinate with other vehicles to move in formation, Reuters reports.

That transpired from email conversations between the company led by global-moonshooter-in-chief Elon Musk and the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

“Our primary goal is the ability to operate our prototype test trucks in a continuous manner across the state line and within the States of Nevada and California in a platooning and/or Autonomous mode without having a person in the vehicle,” Tesla’s Nasser Zamani wrote to DMV in May 2017.

Further confirmation that the project is underway came from California authorities, who told the news agency to be about to meet with Tesla “to talk about [ its] efforts with autonomous trucks.”

Tesla’s official announcement on its trucking programme might be released in September, before the launch of on-road tests— if Musk’s tweets on the topic are to be believed. The Fremont, California-based carmaker would then join Alphabet’s Waymo and Uber-owned Otto in exploring the freighting applications of driverless technology.

Like most tech companies in the field, Tesla seems particularly interested in a specific technique called “platooning”, which would allow long-haul trucks to drive close to each other and follow a lead vehicle— drastically reducing the need for human truck drivers.